Marketers are displaying an understandable reluctance to embrace the new privacy-first changes that have come into play. Many feel that they have lost control of the ability to gather relevant data on potential clients or to analyze responses to their campaigns. Others are bewildered by the new regulations and do not understand the relevant terms sufficiently to enter the debate. Here is a guide that simplifies the important terminology and rules.

What Is Privacy First Marketing?

The background to the privacy-first system is that clients have become better informed about their rights to privacy and have started to fight back against what they see as a usurpation of these rights through marketing aspects such as third-party cookies (see explanation below). This result is two new laws, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Regulation (ePR).

The GDPR stipulates what personal information businesses can obtain about consumers. It also enforces how this information can be used. Where a third party has stored information on a person, that individual can require them to delete it. It came into effect on 25 May 2018.

The ePR is also a European Union regulation and was supposed to take effect from the same date as the GDPR but is still undergoing finalization. It will control the use and processing of the electronic data of individuals. This legislation will take the place of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation.

Privacy-first marketing requires marketers to demonstrate their respect for consumers’ privacy and any data that they do permit to be shared with them. This may include information such as banking details, contact numbers, and email addresses. Privacy-first marketing is essential in the current climate for building consumer trust. But failure to adhere to the new regulations can also result in huge fines for marketers.

Let us look at some terminology that is applicable in this transformation facing marketers and advertisers.

First-party and Third-party Cookies

Large companies like Facebook, Chrome, and Google have been tracking users. Marketers have piggy-backed on these users to make use of their data on consumers. The big companies do this tracking through the use of first-party cookies on the domain (or website) a user goes to, while marketers place third-party cookies on these sites to access this data.

First-party cookies allow business owners to gather analytics data. These cookies are used to remember user information so that the person does not have to log in every time, for example, when doing online shopping with Takealot. It also stores the user’s preferred language and other tasks to ensure a positive user experience.

Third-party cookies are placed on the same sites so that smaller businesses can access first-party cookie data on consumers. This will no longer be allowed, meaning that marketers need to strategize on how to increase or create first-party cookies.

Apple’s IDFA And iOS 14 Update

Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) ascribes random identification tags to every user’s device. It protects the person’s personal information from being tracked but still allows for analysis of ‘top of the funnel’ data. The results can be utilized for customized advertisements.

Apple released its iOS 14 in June 2020. The update contained the App Tracking Transparency feature. This gives users the option to refuse apps tracking them.

Google’s APIs And Analytics 4

Google’s Privacy Sandbox makes use of five Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These APIs can provide analysis and measurement of facets of third-party ads, avoiding the need for third-party cookies. The data is obtained from the Chrome user browser. It measures aspects like attribution and conversion which is useful to marketers.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is an upgraded version of Google Analytics. Both function and produce alternate reports to Universal Analytics, which is just for websites. GA4 includes apps and websites, together or separately. It is moving toward advanced machine learning, an aspect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which will enable it to close the circle on data gaps and retain analyses for marketing campaigns

Google’s Consent Mode

Google’s Consent Mode takes the user’s consent or refusal and adapts how cookies are used accordingly. It is a control that is embedded in a Google Ad. It ensures that an advertiser can only use cookies for purposes that the user has agreed to.

Contextual Targeting

Adverts and pertinent websites are matched with each other under Google’s Display Network. This is contextual targeting. The process is that Google Ads must first analyze each webpage according to its content, then pair this with relevant keywords on an advertiser’s site.

A Walled Garden

Companies such as Amazon and Facebook have walled gardens. These are online environments that are closed to other businesses. They do not share their technology and data with competitors.

A walled garden is a closed online environment that keeps its technology, information, and user data to itself, with the aim of keeping users on a certain website or app. This encourages them to spend money within the walled environment instead of with a competitor. Facebook and Amazon are examples of organizations that prefer to keep as much data to themselves as possible.

A Data Clean Room

A data-clean room provides a safe space where a walled garden can share some of its data with other advertisers. The data is aggregated so that it has been cleaned of personally identifying information. Data clean rooms are managed by stringent privacy controls to protect the private data of individuals. It provides another tool for advertisers that they can compare with first-party cookie data that they have managed to collect on users when assessing the success of a completed marketing campaign. With a better understanding of the terminology that is crucial to a discussion of privacy-first marketing, provided by the brief outline of key terms above, marketers can engage more knowledgeably with the subject. This will help them to determine the most effective strategies for compliance while still obtaining sufficient data to direct their marketing efforts. They will also be in a position to analyze if these labors achieved their marketing goals.